Have you ever had that dream…?

June 20, 2017

Happy Thursday!

Can we chat about something that is not at all book related?

I had a dream the other night that I’ve had before, and I know I’m not the only one because my husband has had it too. It even turns out there’s a Psychology Today article about it. And hundreds of thousands of results if you google it.

Here’s the dream. Sound familiar?

I’m back in school, and it’s final exam time. I realize that there’s a class that I was supposed to be taking, but I’ve never attended it, never done any of the work, and am not at all prepared for the exam. I can’t even find the room it’s in.

It’s not a particularly fun dream, but I find it odd that I have it since I’ve been out of school for twenty years. (My brain obviously knows this because this dream managed to mash the “I forgot to take this class” dream with a twentieth college reunion dream, where I did see a couple old friends and Shawn and Gus from my favorite TV show, Psych.)

Have you had this dream? Apparently an awful lot of people have.

Although it’s incredibly common, I couldn’t find any studies about it. Which is astonishing.

There are studies on everything. I kid you not, I spent about two minutes googling and here are two examples of studies that people have done:

– Can sheep recognize the faces of other sheep? Surprisingly, yes they can. They can recognize 50 other sheep faces and remember them for up to two years. Which might be better facial recognition than I have.

– Do tortoises find yawning contagious? This one turns out to be a no. After spending half a year teaching a tortoise to yawn, it turned out that the yawning was not contagious to other tortoises nearby.

So, um, you’re welcome for those little jewels of knowledge.

Anyway, about the exam dream, there are guesses at why so many people have it. Most revolve around your brain processing stresses and fears from your waking life.

Interestingly, in the article in Psychology Today, out of a set of people in Argentina, who don’t have anything similar to a final exam at the end of a class that can make or break your entire grade, not a single person had had the dream.

So, have you had the “I’m not ready for this exam!” dream?

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Comments

I’ve had that dream or one similar to it: dreaming that I don’t my schedule for the new year. I’ve been out of school for 28 years and have never gone to a reunion for either high school or college. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a study about it. I am not surprised by the tortoise study, however. Has anyone ever had the dream that they can’t control/stop the car they are driving?

Can’t say that I have had that dream of the final exam. But one of my most recurring dreams involves my winning the war against the Axis powers. However, none of the people that I know have ever shared that dream with me!

I love dreams. My version of this one is that I am in a play, haven’t learned the script at all, and it’s opening night. Kind of like an exam 😉 I’m happy to say that over the years I’ve become less anxious about it in my dream, figuring that somehow it will be all right.

The brain at night seems to do some clean-up and re-organization of its networks of connections based on events and emotions of the day. That may be why certain networks (like “exams”) get activated.

More importantly, it also largely “thinks” in metaphors. So, imagine your brain is saying something like…. “Hmmm, you need to get a move on [insert undone or unprepared thing that’s looming over you]. How can I explain this to you? …. ok, remember when you were in school? Imagine it’s one of those days when you have an exam, but you are SO not ready — you haven’t studied, you’re late, you’re even in your pajamas! Remember how that feels? You hate it, right? So let’s get [that thing] managed, ok?”

If the metaphor doesn’t fit (like for the Argentine students), the brain will offer another one — like my acting.

Every year before school started, I would have a dream where I’m running late to class, but I don’t know what my schedule is or where any of the classes are and I have to pee really badly but I can’t find the loo and I’m lacking a crucial piece of clothing. They were always the worst. Since I’ve graduated, I’ve had these horrible mashup dreams where I’m in my college Japanese class doing a presentation, but all the students are the jocks and preps from high school (who I didn’t jive with). The only fun thing about those are that it’s in Japanese and makes me feel like I’m getting somewhere with the language.

I definitely have had that dream; multiple times starting from just out of school to just a couple of weeks ago. Ooo, I still hate that dream. Given that I have my doctorate, one may think that I should not be so afraid of exam time, but…

I have had that dream and similar ones even though I finished university over 40 years ago. Talk about frustrating! Every little while I still fet one or something similar to it. I guess even when sleeping you cannot get away from life and the stresses it causes.